“How can we possibly know why the ring was at the building site and where it came from?” I asked. “And how long ago?” An impossible task, Cassia had said, and I agreed with her.
“I have already begun a list.” Cassia unrolled a bit of another scroll. “We can find out about the ring itself. Something this unique will have been mentioned in records, in histories, in tales, even in gossipy stories passed down through generations. I can also ask goldsmiths—without revealing anything about the ring itself—if anything like it has been made in recent memory. It might simply be a good fake.”
My brows lifted. “You said it was real.”
“It is solid gold, yes. But it might have been created several years ago instead of hundreds, and distressed to appear ancient.” Cassia removed the stopper from her ink bottle and started to make notes. “Though why the person left it in a field for anyone to stumble over, I don’t quite know.”
“It might have been washed up from the Tiber,” I suggested. “Maybe a ship wrecked there, and its things were spread to the field when the river flooded.” The denizens of the Emporium would have snatched up whatever they could carry of the jetsam, but something as small as a ring could have been overlooked.
“An interesting suggestion.” Cassia’s even tone told me she didn’t believe a wrecked ship or barge to be the case, but she would not dismiss it out of hand. “You can ask around the docks if anyone remembers such an accident. I am more of the opinion that the ring was dropped on purpose, though what purpose, as I say, I don’t know. And this might have happened years ago.”
“And simple chance that I picked it up.” I didn’t like such twists of fate. Happening upon a forgotten piece of gold should be a happy situation, not one filled with peril.
“We will know more when we begin looking.”
Cassia appeared optimistic, where I was anything but. However, I’d come to learn that Cassia was very good at methodically examining every piece of knowledge she came by until she reached conclusions. She could also pry information out of the most unlikely people.
I ended the discussion by rolling out Cassia’s bedding next to the closed shutters, lying down on it, and pulling a blanket over myself. “Good night,” I remembered to say.
“Good night, Leonidas.”
Her voice was soft, soothing. How I’d fallen asleep all my life without her to guide me there, I did not know.
In the morning, after a bite of bread, I trudged to the building site. When I turned onto the road along the Tiber, Vibius came out of a lane from the Aventine and joined me.
He greeted me tersely then said, “My wife was unhappy when I told her you found a bit of gold in the field, when I turned up nothing.”
Uneasiness touched me. Of course, Vibius would have passed the tale to his wife, but who knew how many others she’d mentioned it to? Any servant also might have heard their conversation.
“She is of a mind that you should sell it and split the proceeds with me,” Vibius continued. “Only fair, since we are both working for Gallus. It was only luck that you took that end of the site.”
I imagined his wife skewering him with a stare only highborn women could achieve.
“Tell her I no longer have the ring,” I said.
Vibius halted on the road, earning the snarl of two freedmen hurrying past, and stared at me. His face had gone a peculiar shade of green.
“No longer have it?” he repeated. “Leonidas, what have you done?”
Chapter 8
Before I could say a word, Vibius spluttered, “You gave it to your woman scribe, didn’t you? The one who lives with you.”
Because I had, in truth, given it to Cassia, I could only nod. “She no longer has it either.”
“She sold it?” Vibius asked angrily. “Or did you, so you could buy a better trinket?”
This time I did not answer, or nod, or shrug. Let him believe what he wished.
Vibius raked his hand through his thick hair. “Jupiter take you, Leonidas.”
I began walking again, not allowing myself to flinch at his curse. Gods were capricious, sometimes listening, sometimes not. After a moment, Vibius joined me, his breath ragged as he jogged to keep up with me.
“If your wife wanted the ring so much,” I said, “maybe she hired thieves to ransack my apartment.”
“Aelia?” Vibius asked in astonishment. “You believe she would send robbers? My wife is the gentlest of creatures. She’d never dream of harming another, least of all for money.”
He seemed dumbfounded I’d even think of such a thing. And yet, a few moments ago, he’d claimed she’d been very annoyed with him for not bringing home the ring.
